Here is another in what seems to be a steady stream of polls in past few years that show confidence in Congress continuing down. Gallup found that Americans’ confidence in Congress as an institution down to just 10%.
The pollster telephoned almost 1,600 adults and asked: Please tell me how much confidence you, yourself have in each one – a great deal, quite a lot, some, or very little. The results place Congress last for four years running on a list of sixteen societal institutions.
This is the lowest level of confidence Gallup has found, not only for Congress, but for any institution on record.
While Congress – one of the country’s major democratic institutions – continues to unravel, according to Gallup four distinctly undemocratic institutions receive the highest ratings. The military, small business, the police, and the Church or organized religion are the four top institutions eliciting the most confidence.
Americans remain most confident in the military, at 76%. Small business and the police also continue to rank highly, with 65% and 57% of Americans, respectively, expressing "a great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in these institutions.
The Church or organized religion in the Gallup poll ranked fourth at 48%. All this may not be a good sign for the future when confidence in Congress lags so far behind the military; the police and even small business-not that all three in aren’t deserving institutions in their own way. It seems as if a democracy that is functioning well and in balance would have institutional confidence levels more evenly divided.
more data after the jump
And one has to wonder why such confidence in the military after all the revelations of rape and sexual harassment?
I also wonder whether the stats for religion are true across the board or whether there is notable variation from religion to religion.
The people are not amused that the architects of worldwide economic failure have not only not been punished for the greedy actions that caused the collapse, but have been rewarded, instead.
When Bank of America is caught lying to customers about the receipt of paperwork in order to maximize the fees they collect before they go ahead and foreclose anyway, the people expect their elected representatives to DO SOMETHING to STOP the fraudulent practices.
When students are struggling to afford even a basic level of college education, the people expect that their representatives will DO SOMETHING to make education more accessible and affordable, not double their student loan interest rates.
When it becomes clear that a secret organization has engaged in broad over-reach in collecting and using private data, the people expect their representatives will DO SOMETHING to stop the abuses, not make excuses.
When the world’s climate (and thus the weather) is becoming increasingly unstable, threatening our food supplies, the people expect their representatives to DO SOMETHING to stop it, not provide subsidies to increase the problem.
…
and so on.
By choosing not to fix the most obvious problems facing our country, they’re showing the voters that they aren’t interested in actually representing them. Guess what result that has on the voters’ opinions?
What does this mean?
It means the Republican/tea party message that government is the root of all evil is very successful.
Destroying our democratic institutions that took over 200 years to build to provide a better life for most if not all of us.